


Ripples

by EK (ilyat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Species Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:14:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyat/pseuds/EK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though her friends insisted otherwise, she knew that her gift of precognition was a curse. It was never clean. There were no constants. Even the variables where mutable within themselves, turning things inside out and upside down until the inexact science of seeing forward became muddied with the countless possibilities.</p><p>For Ouroboros Mix 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripples

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmogyral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/gifts).
  * Inspired by [drawing out the season's stains](https://archiveofourown.org/works/300683) by [cosmogyral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral). 



> I hope you don't mind that I took a couple details that stood out to me and ran with them! Thank you for letting me work with your story!

Jade closed her eyes and let herself float.

Unbidden, waves rolled out before her, surging and churning with an unseen ebb and flow. It was almost like looking at the ocean from the vantage of a little skiff. One minute the waves would rise all around her in a flex amorphous walls, and then the next she would soar to the crest of one and see out far, far ahead. It was a sea of possibility - of probability.

What greater subject of probability to study was there than that of the future?

Perched on high, she could see all the ways forward that she could go and what those actions would reap. There were lines crossing her future-potentials, paths or veins made by others around her: friends, enemies, a tiny insect alighting on a flower. Where those lines met and diverged opened up new future-potentials, some possibilities reuniting again further ahead while others dipped down into valleys hidden from her view. Some futures loomed on the distant horizon, massive and inevitable with countless paths leading toward those all encompassing outcomes though the precise twists and turns in between often dipped out of view amid the ocean waves. Others shifted almost unseen on the edges, the thinnest of routes leading toward them, perpetually dipping low into the unknown.

She looked down, ahead. Tonight was going to be a long night - the clearest routes dipping down into different valleys and out of view. She could already see the blood spilled, the death coming, and in some of those valleys her path ended. She had to avoid them at all costs. Waiting for her past all of the carnage was an outcome she liked, one of safety and solace. She had to stay calm to reach it.

With a sigh, Jade opened her eyes. There was a faint glow in her room from LEDs, green and blue and red forming odd patterns as they cast discordant shadows across the ceiling and floor. It was well past sunset, and she regretted having slept so late. Sometimes it was almost too much to see what might be or what could be.

Slipping out of her recooperacoon, she padded to her ablution block, leaving sopor footsteps in her wake. The water was deliciously hot. It had a saltiness that she had chemically introduced two sweeps ago after she realized that just the smell reminded her of her moirail - and that was always a good thing when she had to calm herself after a particularly vicious fight with no way to safely make her way to Rose's hive. She didn't close her eyes this time. Head tilted down, she watched the water drip off her nose.

There would be a fight. She knew it, she could tell - though exactly what happened in it was one of those things that had been hidden in a dip too far beyond. There were too many lines that converged together there, and too few trailing away. Even her own paths from there were faint and scattered. It would be a risky fight, and she might not come out of it alive if she pursued it.

But the alternatives..

Jade shuddered and turned off the water. Toweling herself dry, she wandered through her hive unmindful of her own nudity. She made herself a meal - little more than barely-irradiated meat, because while she wasn't hungry then, she knew that in a few hours she'd need as much energy as she could muster - then wandered over to check the few messages left on her husktop. The longest was a running monologue from Dave. She gave him a few lines in reply before turning her attention to the more important one.

 _..ahh, good_. Jade grinned. News coverage from last night's excitement was starting to filter across the internet, large gaps in the official channels' articles made all the more noticeable by the way the radical blog network was recirculating stories taken down hours before. And someone had gotten photographs, too! There was a moment of mild disappointment when she recognized them for stills taken from a video feed - and no video left hidden anywhere on Trolltube - but satisfied herself in knowing that at least the best explosion shots still remained. It was always worth it when the Imperial crest was visible on one of the hull remnants.

That section of the city would be cordoned off for the next perigee. That - and similar facilities - would have heightened security for at least three. She wanted to get back out again and get the other half of the shipment now, but doing so would be suicide. Even for a limeblood.

 _Especially for a limeblood_ , she thought sourly.

A whine brought her back to the present. "Bec!" Leaping from her chair, Jade tore down the curving hall back to her room and was nearly bowled over by the large dog. With a laugh, she planted a kiss to his nose. "I sure hope you're hungrier than me! I left yours in your bowl." Though he'd taken the best care of her when she was a grub, Jade had long ago swapped that role with her lusus, and she still wouldn't have traded him for anything in the world. His tongue lolling, he just grinned back at her.

"Listen, buddy." Jade held his furry cheeks between her hands, her tone much more serious. "I can't take you with me again tonight, okay? It's going to be dangerous, at least as bad as last night and maybe more. I can't worry about you when I need to worry about me first, alright?"

Bec's ears were perked forward, and he raised one eyebrow then the other as she spoke to him. Finally, he interrupted her by leaning forward to poke her nose with his, following up the gesture with a fervent lick.

"Gross! Not up my nose!!" Jade released him with a laugh and a pap. _Good barkbeast. Best lusus._

A glance at the alarm clock told her that she was in danger of being late to the engagement she had seen. There was no time to dry her hair, still damp from her evening ablutions. Dressing in a hurry, she snatched one of her rifles - a standard Imperial terrestrial model, lifted half a sweep prior from a supply ship, so it wouldn't matter when she left it behind - and bolted out of her hive. The familiar click of heavy locks falling into place behind her in an automated sequence in time with a passing train was all the reassurance she needed that she was still in time.

\---

The second hardest part about knowingly walking into an ambush was pretending that everything leading up to it was perfectly normal. Jade kept her rifle shouldered, the muzzle pointed toward the ground and her left elbow just casually brushing against the stock like any urban troll with a riflekind specibus would on any other night. She kept that light bounce in her step that she knew she adopted whenever she was in a good mood - it was Rose who had pointed it out to her, once, and ever since then she'd always noticed exactly what she was doing two paces into it - and even hummed a little bit. Her tune echoed oddly along the narrow alleyway, the tall walls bouncing it back at her in a discordant mess.

Even so, it was still startling, if not surprising, when the first blueblood stepped directly in her path, blocking the alley west. Sharply dressed in crimson and teal, she held a slender club in one hand, a blunted hook extending from its one side. With a predictable flare for the dramatic inherent in all nearly would-be Legislacerators, she pointed it directly at Jade.

"Dijada Harley, you are hereby notified that you are a felon with outstanding warrants as issued by the Imperial Magisterrorist of the 32nd Sector, New Alternia City! Henceforth you shall surrender yourself to arrest and interrogation for your crimes against the Empire! Charges at present include, but are not limited to--"

"Bluh, bluh," Jade sneered at her, cutting the other troll off, "I'm gonna give you one chance, fuckface, before I start shooting!" Swinging the rifle muzzle forward and up with her left hand, she neatly slid the sling over her head and horns with her right, finishing the maneuver off with a sharp twist of the hands that seated the grip right where she needed it - and the barrel pointed straight at the Neophyte. "But you already look like you're dead on your feet, so I guess I know what you decided, huh?? You'd better turn around now or I'm going to put those holes right through your skull again!!"

"Include, but are not limited to!" The blueblood took a step closer, her voice raised in a reckless display that meant she was some combination stupid, suicidal, or just the diversion in a poorly-organized ambush. "Destruction of--!"

The crunch of gravel behind he was all Jade needed to know that the ambush was in full swing. She fired off three rounds before turning, not even waiting to see if all three hit her mark. (It would've only been two, one dead center on the forehead, one half a finger's width above it and to the right, and the last ricocheting off the side of one horn - not a real hit. The troll would twist a bit after she fell, smearing dark blood across the left side of her temple. At least, that's how she looked mere seconds before her death when Jade had hazarded a blink.) Jade was still moving, twisting painfully on her left foot as her ankle rolled, but still whirling around fast enough to catch the dagger with the stock of her rifle. The blade slid, almost caught her forearm, and the teal howled in frustration.

"You're dead, too!" Jade shrieked, not needing to close her eyes now to see the slice across his throat that had not yet struck, blood pouring down to soak through his uniform some moments in the future. "I really don't care about you, you know, but that includes not wanting to kill you for no stupid reason!! Why don't you all just _leave me alone!!_ "

The tealblood tried with the knife a second time, but this time when Jade parried it, she took hold of the blade and used his momentum to break his grip. Half a heartbeat later, and he was crumpling to the floor, his dying words coming in a sick gurgle as blood surged out of his new mouth cut directly into his throat.

A flash of movement caught Jade off guard as searing pain bit into her throat. _Wirekind!_ Jade dropped her rifle, snatching at the garrote before it could pinch too tight and end her in mere seconds. The wire bit into her fingers painfully, and she knew that she was in trouble. Was this why the valley had been so shadowed? Was this where her path faltered enough that she wouldn't make it out? No.. not yet-- A blue rushing her still bore the visage of death, eviscerated messily from pelvis to sternum with entrails falling out in a macabre jig. Remembering herself, Jade snapped the knife she'd stolen back and heard the grunt from behind. The hit was solid enough that the would-be executioner released his group enough for her to jerk forward, breath coming back to her and horns plunging all the way through the charging troll.

" _Why don't you ever learn?!_ "

With a monstrous shriek, Jade twisted her head and pushed up, splitting the blue wide open and nearly gagging as flesh and organs rained down on her as heavily as the blood. She knew that she was slipping - she could feel it as the anger took her. Sounds grew louder into a roar until even that somehow became a muted cushion against reality. Colors and shadow blurred, her vision turning green as her blood quickened. Even the faces of the dead - or soon-to-be dead - took on a fanciful cast, like some would-be Cultist painter tried to show the world just what the sense of smell looked like in a rainbow of teal and cobalt and cerulean.

Blood spilled and covered her and filled her with its stench, so caught up was she in the heat and the motion and the anger - that they kept following her, that they kept at her friends, that they wouldn’t turn back, that they wouldn’t stop coming, that they wouldn’t change, that _they wouldn’t listen_.

She didn’t remember finishing off the garroter, nor the one that followed. Or the one after her. It was only when she had started to turn on the last pair of Neophytes that a whiff of brine made it through the haze as one kicked her hard enough to knock her head against a stony wall. Her hair still damp and carrying with it the odor of her salty ablution block, a part of Jade remembered--

_Eyes so vibrantly purple they bordered on treasonous fuschia, dark lips quirked in a smile that showed just the tip of razor teeth, her movement graceful enough that she looked like she was swimming even when she was on sinful land, a laugh full of warmth and cruelty restrained, a soft touch of the hand against Jade’s cheek--_

\--just enough--

 _Dark shadows curling around her vision, the stench of sulfur rising, great lightless arms that bent and swayed without bones, a black fire that burned across her skin, power crackling in the air in a sinister report, eldritch whispers babbling forth from the beyond, and_ she _was caught in the midst of it, given over it, to **them** , with no one to pull her back before it was too--_

\--to come back.

“ _Rose._ ”

Jade froze as her senses returned. She stood over the top half of a teal, its jaw already torn from its head and cast aside to some unknown corner of the alley. There were two more left, standing a dozen paces ahead and obviously hesitating. The one on the left looked more dead than the one on the right, but even then.. it wasn’t as obvious as it had even with the other trolls. Sometimes the chest was torn open, but other times..

“Listen carefully to me,” Jade growled, her teeth bared at the pair. She felt sticky all over, sore. She was pretty sure she might’ve cracked something. “You are going to leave. Now. And never come back. If you follow me, you. _will. die._ ”

She let go of the dead teal’s head. It fell to the pavement with a sickening sound. “Don’t follow me,” she growled again, then turned and fled.

\---

Though her friends insisted otherwise, she knew that her gift of precognition was a curse. It was never clean. There were no constants. Even the variables where mutable within themselves, turning things inside out and upside down until the inexact science of _seeing forward_ became muddied with the countless possibilities.

Jade wasn’t sure how she ended up in that corner of the city. She’d not seen this coming anywhere from the paths that led out of the fight, and that made it all the more exciting - and all the more dangerous. But she was so tired, then, of everything that they kept throwing at her.

She _had_ to come here.

When the door opened, Jade couldn’t move at first. She saw Rose’s eyes widen, which meant that she looked at least as bad as she felt. But there was no hesitation there, there never was, and she felt the tight knot in her chest begin to loosen just at the sight of her moirail.

Rose reached forward, smooth fingers sliding around Jade’s horn, and it was all that she could do to not break down there. No- this was right, this was where should be, when she should be. With a frustrated sigh borne from her misery, Jade let the moment draw out as she drew strength from that contact. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but--”

“But anyone else who shelters you when you’re covered in this would be culled.” Rose offered her one of those half-smiles, a quirk of the lips as she wiped off some of the darker blue ichor onto the front of her own door. With an unspoken gesture she ushered Jade inside.

The door swung shut on its silent hinges. “I’m sorry,” Jade murmured, but deep down she already knew that this was going to turn out all right.


End file.
